Various computer applications are used to create graphics, applications, animations, videos, and other electronic content. Many such applications provide a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) interface that allows the appearance of the electronic content being created to be specified on a graphical canvas area. However created, electronic content can involve displaying, animating, or otherwise playing various types of visually-perceptible objects. Geometric shapes, images, pictures, and text are examples of such objects. How such objects are positioned in the electronic content can vary and may depend upon the particular type of electronic content. On web pages, rich Internet applications, and various other types of electronic content, the position of objects is often defined in a creation application with reference to an aspect of the electronic content. For example, an object's position may be defined with respect to distance from one or more of the edges of the electronic content's display area.
While defining object positioning with respect to content edges is useful, it is also often desirable to create and use more complicated object layouts. Content creators, for example, often find it useful to define object positioning with respect to other content objects. For example, all of the individual objects that make up a button may be defined as parts of a single group so that the button can be moved, rotated, resized, or otherwise edited more efficiently in a content creation application. Those individual objects that make up the button may each have a position that is defined by reference to a bounds associated with the entire group of objects. Those bounds may be different from the edges of the electronic content. In one particular example, a button component is implemented as a parent component and the individual objects that make up the button are defined as child components such that their position is defined relative to bounds associated with the parent button component.